As metro-area residents lit candles Sunday, uttered prayers and read out loud the names of the 32 people killed at Virginia Tech, many in the local Korean-American community considered the role of culture and society in the shootings.

The shooter, who emigrated to the United States from South Korea as a boy, was clearly disturbed, said Richard “Dick” Evans, pastor of Washington Park United Methodist Church and the adoptive father of a 27-year-old Korean son.

Evans, citing reports that shooter Seung-Hui Cho had been mocked as a child by classmates for the way he talked, also questioned whether the ostracization Cho faced from peers could have been among many factors leading up to last week’s massacre.

They laughed at him and told him to “go back to China,” Evans told about 150 who gathered at Asbury Korean United Methodist Church on South Colorado Boulevard in Centennial for a two-hour memorial.

“As a dad of a 27-year-old son who has been told the same thing, ‘Go back where you came from,’ I wonder what could have made a difference,” Evans said.

“Feeling like a victim, being marginalized … is a breeding ground for rage, which coupled with his psychotic problems is lethal.”

Korean-American church members said they were astounded and ashamed as a community by Cho’s actions. They described themselves as a quiet people who work hard and care about their image. When Cho gunned down the students and professors, it harmed the Korean community internationally and sparked fears of retaliation, they said.

Andre Moon, 18, said “there is a sense of shame and guilt there for the Korean community” because Cho was from South Korea.

His mother, Yeon Moon, said she believes “95 percent of Koreans feel the same way. They feel bad.”

She said that when she learned the shooter was Asian, she hoped he was Chinese. “When they said, ‘Korean,’ it really broke me down,” she said.

Hans Chung, also 18, said it was “a little scary” to tell his friends he is from South Korea during discussions about the shooting at school.

The boys said they have been the targets of similar comments that Cho heard, telling them to go back to their countries.

Evans told the congregation that while many are looking to place blame, from a Christian perspective, Cho is “one of us, not just one of the Korean community.

“There is no us and them, just us,” Evans said, “the human family, the family of God.”

The service at the Korean church wasn’t the only memorial Sunday night.

More than 100 students, many with ties to Virginia, gathered in a drizzling rain to hold a candlelight vigil on the steps of the University of Colorado’s Norlin Library in Boulder.

“We are all Hokies tonight,” said Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Ron Stump, addressing the crowd.

Four members of On the Rocks, a school a cappella group, sang “Amazing Grace” amid the dim candlelight before the group fanned out to encircle 32 roses set on the library steps.

Those attending then bowed their heads while remembering the victims.

Two CU students from Virginia organized the vigil, sending a campus-wide e-mail Friday.

“We were trying to find a way to express sincere sympathies for what happened there,” said Ashley Hall, a senior from Richmond, Va., who helped put together the gathering.

As news of the deadly mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, unfolded last week, Pia Guerra, a 46-year-old Vancouver-based artist, felt helpless. She couldn’t bring herself to go to sleep, so she began to draw.

Police who find suspected drugs during a traffic stop or an arrest usually pause to perform a simple task: They place some of the material in a vial filled with liquid. If the liquid turns a certain color, it’s supposed to confirm the presence of cocaine, heroin or other narcotics.